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If it was not clear before, and I’ll argue that it was, just nobody was really paying attention, it is clear now that the entire Progressive project is going off the rails. If at any point in the last few years anybody, including the architects of Leftist Lunacy, thought they had it under control that illusion has been dispelled. The law of unintended consequences is in charge now as events set in motion years ago cascade out of anybody’s control. The Left’s motto seems to be, “We are all going to die, but we do it faster.” Consider:

Multiculturalism is one of the linchpins of correct Leftist doctrine. It asserts that all cultures are good and are to be equally valued, except Western Culture and American culture in particular. So they set about importing gazillions of non-Western people with no intention of even suggesting that they ought to assimilate. No, each proudly maintains its own heritage, asserting its superiority over and demanding ever more concessions from the host culture, else they won’t form the solidly reliable liberal voting blocks they are intended to be.

Most such cultural blocks are content to take what they can get, particularly unearned, taxpayer funded support. But some have the built-in conviction that they are destined to rule and a history of achieving this rule by the use of war. This year again France has been awakened to this fact. It seems unlikely that the ruling elite intends to remain awake any longer than it takes to soothe the peasantry back into somnolence. But the French are awake to the danger, as are a great many Germans, Swedes, Poles and just about everybody else. Why, even Americans are waking up! Masses of people are aroused and seem determined to change the system, which is not at all what the Utopian Dream Masters want.

Here in America the Dream Masters have been pushing for a race war using multiculturalism as pretext. The hoopla with Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, et al is intended to ignite and fan the flames of septic resentment among American Blacks, isolating them and inciting them to violence. #BlackLivesMatter carries the not unintended corollary, #OtherLivesDon’t, particularly White lives. As George Orwell pointed out in Animal Farm, some animals are more equal than others.

Since the black lives matter meme has infected the University of Missouri the contagion has spread to other institutions of higher dementia to such an extent that the professors of Socialist propaganda and Leftist twaddle can’t even indoctrinate their charges. This has had the unintended consequence of exposing the university system as the preferred (because it is so expensive!) means of turning the cream of American youth into irrational, whiny losers utterly unfit to be entrusted with their own pocket lint, much less the future of the nation. Pushback from this has already begun, not least from the young people who hope for more than Dreams From Mein Fuhrer in their future, and the parents who fund their kids’ “education.” It will only grow.

Everywhere the proponents of the Blue Model Assault on AmericaTM have the blues. If Conservatives and Republicans have been discouraged that is as nothing to the panic that is beginning to overwhelm those who have dedicated their whole lives to the destruction of America’s republican form of government and its replacement with the Worker’s Paradise. This not the time to rest, we’ve been doing quite enough of that. Now is the time to go on the offensive and knock the Dream Masters down once and for all.

How to do that?

For starters, make an appointment with your local elected officials for a friendly meeting in which you express your desire that you don’t want foreign invaders, be they refugees or not, to be resettled in your community at taxpayer expense. Attend your city council meeting and make the same point firmly but politely. Network with the people you find there, form alliances and devise plans to cooperate on issues important to them even if they are not that important to you.

Get information on the classes offered by the Center for Self Governance in your area. Take those classes and take control of your government back.

Over the weekend, Breitbart reports, that Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s supporters took a page from the Left and applied it to the Left. Observe:

The Washington Times is reporting Arpaio’s opponents are having trouble obtaining the number signatures they need in their petition to recall “America’s Sheriff” Joe Arpaio.

Volunteers’ latest effort took place at a music festival, targeted for its huge crowd size and liberally-minded attendees, The Associated Press reported.

But shortly after setting up camp, recall workers found themselves facing an even larger opposition group: Supporters of Mr. Arpaio turned out in droves and drowned out the recall workers’ rally calls, AP reported.

At the end of the day, pro-recall workers only netted 100 signatures — far less than anticipated for such a heavily attended event.

The union-backed recall drive started in January, and anti-Arpaio forces are reportedly far behind in their goal. They need to collect 335,000 signatures by May 30, and are having to rely primarily on volunteers due to the fact that the effort is not attracting much in the way of donations.

This is good and is another illustration of the ‘Silent majority’ getting off their posterior analytics and on the ball. This is one possible response to the Lefts ongoing efforts to continue their march to despotism.

1.) Expose the basic contradictions of the Left’s position by letting them “own” the fiscal crisis and confront them on their role in redefining (at a handsome profit) “culture” as it relates to the evil “gun culture.”

2.) Expose the rifts between unions and various other factions and groups fighting for smaller pieces of the fiscal pie and sow discord within their ranks.

Go read them all, then run your OODA loops and get going. (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) No time to review these this morning, will do so later and post an update later.

Perhaps the biggest mistake conservatives make is to engage the Left rationally. Leftism is a religion, a worldview, an attitude, a community. It is a doctrine and a church. It dispenses comfort, support, certitude and salvation.

Don’t come at with statistics, facts and figures. Those will bounce off like peas of an Abrams tank. You must come at it with a rival set of feelings, a package of meanings they can embrace. You must offer them redemption.

That’s why Islam can convert leftists. Or leftists can convert Islamists. They are simply switching religions. They are not engaging in a rational exercise. We live in the most religious period in the history of the race.

People want paradise on earth, 72 virgins, the Mothership, Xenu, Gaia and who knows what else. And if all you have to offer them is cold statistics and facts you will never get them to see anything.

The reason the Left hates Christianity and to a lesser extent Judaism so much is that they recognize in them, more than conservatives do, a rival faith. For their doctrine is “I am the Lord Thy God. Thou shalt not have anything before me.”

Your humble (I can hear my wife now, “Humble! Give me a break!”) correspondent has long advocated the application of the mechanism of Alinskyis pestis against its disseminators. Steal their methods, their tactics, their strategies. Wretchard advocates going one better, which I would view as complementary: steal their language. Just as a vaccine is made of dead or dying germs, so the antidote to Alinsyis pestis might, I would even say “must” be made from the raw material of the parasite itself.

Race is a taboo subject – unless you are Black speaking to non-Blacks, Hispanic speaking to non-Hispanics, Asian speaking to non-Asians or a Democrat speaking to anyone at all. If you are not in any of the categories just mentioned, or worse, White, shut your pie hole and cast down your eyes because you, yes YOU, are a racist oppressor – by tautology.

The accusation of racism is a political cudgel used to discredit anyone not a member of these favored groups, an accusation which once made need never be proven and can never be disproved. The accusation itself comes complete with its own facts, its own judgement and its own sentence; it nullifies any defense, including any counter accusation for only the chosen non-categories above are entitled to make it. A white can never make the accusation of a non-white for if he does the stigma applies to him in the same way as if any non-white had made the accusation first. Because none of these favored non-white categories are, were or could ever be racist, which leads to the absurd but widely believed idea that race determines who can be racist.

Once the term ‘racism’ meant “a belief that human races have distinctive characteristics that determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.” The march of progress subsequently deleted the idea of culture from that definition and focused on only the most superficial physical characteristics; multiculturalism means that all cultures are equal, another patent absurdity. Finally in our own enlightened age the accusation of racism has come to mean, “You are committing thought crime by not repeating the approved politically correct nostrums and I don’t like it. Since I am unable to rationally and logically refute your points I will call you names until you either change you position and toe the PC party line (either because no such refutation is logically possible or because I don’t have the intellectual or rhetorical skills to do so), or I make you cry and you shut up and go home.” Strangely, this is not bullying, but that is one of the new rules of racism.

Nor should it go unremarked that there is no little irony that the accusation of racism is almost exclusively a weapon used by the Democratic Party, which supported enslaving the blacks and opposed the abolitionists, to blacken the Republican Party which was founded by abolitionists and successfully prosecuted a policy of racial equality. The Left has brought about a world of Orwellian moral inversion, which deserves examination at another time.

Racism, real racism, not the political weapon masquerading as racism, is alive and well in the United States. It is growing, in no small part precisely because it has been used as a political weapon. The Left and the Democratic Party have sought and successfully obtained political advantage by inflaming racial passions. By so doing it has set before the victims their own policies have created, abetted and enlarged the idea that their troubles were rather the result of racist enmity by the Democrats’ political enemies. It has pounded that drum unceasingly, has created a whole race baiting industry proclaim racial blame from the rooftops, has relentlessly fanned the flames of racial discord, it has protected and bankrolled the race mongers, it has hysterically marketed such white-on-anybody-that’s-not-white violence as it can find to both further diminish the self confidence of the racially neutral and inflame the rage of the victim’s racial group and finally it has hidden the racial violence that it has fomented.

That racial violence has increased to the point where it can no longer be successfully contained or covered up, though it is not yet widely known. Divide and conquer has become divide and destroy. The problem has become so great, in my opinion, that a simple political fix is no longer possible. It is not yet politically possible to even talk about this openly, much less devise and implement a solution. It may be that it will never be possible to openly discuss this before an explosion creates such fear and animosity that discussion is not possible.

One of the great unpalatable and therefore seldom mentioned truths is that responsibility is with the one who sees. Knowledge is power, but only if acted upon. Here responsibility is distinguished from mere blaming, which is the antithesis of responsibility. There is a tendency in the perceived absence of viable solutions to avoid opening cans of worms, especially when it is well known that blame will be leveled both for opening the can and for the existence of the worms. Still, the discussion must be opened, and done in such a way that there is accountability, correct understanding of the problem and many minds working together to devise and implement workable solutions on many fronts.

Will the Republican Party, with its noble tradition of racial equality, be equal to the task before it? How should we begin? Your ideas solicited in the comments.

Much of the speculation has been about why so many news outlets ignored the story. But perhaps the real story here is the way the trial became a national story without the help of the MSM—and arguably even despite its best efforts to ignore the trial. In the last century, there were a few central news gatekeepers who controlled what stories Americans heard. The internet and social media have changed all that; the people have swept aside the gatekeepers and ripped the gates from their hinges.

The MSM is no longer in control; anyone and everyone now has the tools to call the media out and if the story is hot and compelling enough (and the trial of an accused multiple baby killer passes that test with ease), it will force itself into the national conversation.

Good.

Good indeed. The conventional wisdom tells us that you can’t beat the MSM because they control the narrative and there’s no way to break in. Even buying another media outlet would simply result in the MSM isolating it and rendering it virtually useless. But it appears that, as has been predicted by various pundits elsewhere, alternative media has opened up a new front in the culture wars. One which the armies of the Left have yet to successfully counter. Which is not to say that they don’t use these same weapons effectively, they do. What has changed is that they can no longer control it.

Yates Walker overt at The Daily Caller has a great article that proposes that Republicans capitalize on shame, now that the President has opened up that can of worms. Here are some graphs, read it all:

As a nation, we’re burning the house down because we’re cold. The next American generation is going to be cold, staring at a pile of ashes and told that they have to pay interest on it. . . . Ours is a government of thieving hedonists. And the leader of that government is invoking shame over the fact that only 41 laws prohibited Adam Lanza from shooting up an elementary school?

Whether Republican leaders realize it or not, Barack Obama just pulled his goalie. He opened a door to Republican victory and a conservative resurgence that could define the next 10 election cycles. By invoking shame, Obama started a conversation that he never intended to start.

. . .

GOP critics are presently insisting that the GOP needs fundamental change to appeal to new voters. They’re wrong. It’s all about messaging. It’s always about messaging. Would Obama have won in 2008 if he said that he was going to abandon Clinton’s landmark welfare reform, extend food stamps to one-seventh of our citizenry, take over a sixth of our economy, fold on gay marriage, leave embassies undefended, abandon all of the progress our soldiers fought for in Iraq, legalize untried, indefinite detention of American citizens, and add $10 trillion to the national debt — all the while, partying with celebrities in Hollywood, inciting class warfare, and soaking the rich?

No. . . .

Republicans can learn from Alinsky. Someone in leadership on the right needs to engage Obama in a national conversation about shame, redirecting the shame from gun control to spending and the willful mortgaging of America’s future. Whenever Obama mentions new spending, he needs to hear a shame chorus from the right concerning shattered piggy banks and America’s beleaguered future generations. The shame angle needs to be harped on until it gets a response from the president. Eventually Obama will be forced to address the argument. When he does, specific cuts should be demanded. If he makes the requested cuts, new cuts should be demanded. When he fails, the shame chorus should begin anew.

. . .

Unlike most Republican arguments, this one is bite-sized, populist, and winning: Stop robbing America’s children. A brighter, less indebted American future polls well with students, parents, seniors, veterans, whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, and everyone else.

I’ve been reluctant to address the issue of “gay marriage” but I don’t feel that I can in good conscience continue to do so. It is time, in the immortal words of W.C. Fields, to take the bull by the tail and face the situation. I propose to address two issues, political expediency and cultural survival.

Recently it has become the ‘in’ thing for politicians to ‘evolve’ into an acceptance of same sex marriage, including, to my amazement, Republican politicians. In a way I am not surprised to find Republican politicians ‘evolving’ in step with their Democratic brethren. 160 years ago the newly founded Republican Party was at the vanguard of the abolitionist movement and was the political embodiment of social and cultural change. That was a change that grew out of one of America’s great awakenings, and arose spontaneously and organically in the public consciousness. It had its foundations in the principles of Christian religion and the Constitution. It set about rectifying the fundamental injustice of slavery and removing the contradiction that slavery is to the principles of individual liberty The same sex marriage movement has tried to draw the same mantle around itself but is fact the product of a massive agitprop campaign to foist on Americans something that is both alien and repugnant to us.

In every instance in which same sex marriage has been put on the ballot it has failed to pass and failed decisively. If the proposition cannot pass muster with the electorate it is certainly not going to pass muster with the base of the Republican Party which tends to be not only more fiscally conservative but more socially conservative than the population in general. Because the proponents of same sex marriage have access to and are supported by the main stream media there is favorable mention of it everywhere and any opposition is either denounced, derided or ignored. Anyone with no memory of elections past would legitimately think that the absence of same sex marriage was a burning injustice and that the stones themselves were crying out for remedy. Not so.

In embracing this issue Republican politicians have transparently done so as a matter of political expediency, hitching themselves to the presumably rising star of the hot issue of the day. In doing so they have not only traduced their own values but betrayed the values of their base. They suppose that by embracing the currently fashionable trend they will distinguish themselves from their political rivals and so gain the approval of a majority of the voters. Unfortunately for them, and tragically for the Republican Party, no politician can gain office while repudiating the base. The same is true for political parties. I will submit for your consideration, gentle reader, that if the Republican Party continues to repudiate the base it will soon become one with the dodo bird and the Whigs.

Were marriage no more than a delectable sentimental fashion accessory designed lend the perfect air of gravitas and publicly validated ardor to a torrid romance I would have no problem with the so-called gay marriage. Marriage is not that, however. It is in principle the primary, indeed preeminent means by which children are brought into the world, reared in relative security and stability and socialized into the culture that surrounds them and in which they will most likely spend their lives. Every child has the right in principle to share in the love of one man (father) and one woman (mother) whose commitment to each other provides the foundation for the child’s understanding of what it means to be a man or a woman in the world and what the relationship between them is. Same sex unions fail at the outset on the first count, procreation. They fail on the diverse role model (which is especially difficult for boys who have a greater need for fathers as models and guides than do girls). Finally, they fail in that children raised by same sex couples are not as well adjusted to society as their heterogenic peers. The evidence in support of these propositions is overwhelming.

Years ago we were told that what gay people really wanted was simply acceptance as human beings. This was always there, but we stopped calling them names and started calling them gay (that was as great a public relations triumph like Democrats becoming blue and Republicans red). Then we were told that all they wanted was civil unions which would give them functionally identical rights as hetero married couples. This was given and here we are again with a very small fraction of the population (3-4%) demanding that everybody else change the culture to suit them. Now it is even presented as a civil right, as if homosexuals previously had no right to matrimony. What nonsense! Everyone has the right to marry within the definition of marriage and the laws of consanguinity, and plenty have done so. I have known (not in the Biblical sense, I hasten to assure you!) homosexual men (note that the ‘homo’ in ‘homosexual’ is the Greek ‘homo’ (meaning ‘same’), not the Roman ‘homo’ (meaning ‘man’)) who struggled to be faithful husbands to their wives and good fathers to their children. These men I support and encourage.These men I honor. Same for homosexual women who struggle to be faithful wives and good mothers.

Why would that be, I wonder, this continual pushing of the envelope? Equality? Were that so everyone who labeled anyone who opposed ‘same sex marriage’ “homophobe,” “hater” or “antediluvian troglodyte” would have the law hailed down on them as does anyone today who utters a homosexual slur, dares raise their voice in opposition, does not sufficiently lionize or acquiesce to the gay mystique and the ever changing rules for ever more “inclusiveness.” This isn’t about equality. It’s about transgression and forcing everybody else to applaud that transgression under pain of legal consequences. Archbishop Chaput is worth quoting here: Evil talks about tolerance only when it’s weak. When it gains the upper hand, its vanity always requires the destruction of the good and the innocent, because the example of good and innocent lives is an ongoing witness against it. So it always has been. So it always will be.

This is just another step down the slipper slope to a further and ever further erosion of Western Civilization, which, ironically, is the only one in which proponents of homosexual rights are not only tolerated, but protected and celebrated. The family has long been known to be the foundation of civilization. Across history societies have codified laws support and protect that foundation, knowing that without it they would collapse. There are those who argue that all our institutions have become so corrupt and debased that they are hardly worth the effort to defend. Whereas it is true the Gramscian long march through the culture of the West has wrought enormous damage, and has a way to go, American institutions in particular have always rested on two things: adherence to the principles of the Founding and Natural Law. Decisions have consequences, and bad decisions have bad consequences, and bad consequences cause pain, pain, in turn, prompts, even forces, change.

Fifty years on we can see the damage wrought by the Left, particularly in the arena of the family. In 1968 Daniel Patrick Moynahan noted that as a result of the perverse incentives of LBJ’s Great Society children born out of wedlock had increased to 25% among Blacks; today it stands at 78% (53% among Hispanics and 30% among Whites). From the Founding to early 60’s the illegitimacy rate in the US was stable at between 3% and 5%. Moynahan considered the 25% figure he observed a catastrophe for the Black community; so it has proven to be. Only now is it dawning on the Progressives that maybe the well known consequences of absent fathers might go well beyond merely monetary child support. So it will prove with same sex marriage. Yes, yes, a nod and a wink to “good people” and those most famous of paving stones, “good intentions.”

It is also ironic that it is fashionable to tolerate this kind of behavior, but disapproval is intolerable amongst the tolerant. Bishop Fulton Sheen, in his 1931 book “The Curse of Broadmindedness,” had this to say about tolerance: “. . tolerance and intolerance apply to two totally different things. Tolerance applies only to persons, but never to principles. Intolerance applies only to principles, but never to persons.”

In considering whether to embrace the movement to normalize same sex marriage there is this consideration, too often absent from today’s political calculus: are Republicans also willing to embrace the consequences of their choices? For certainly there will be consequences; all choices carry with them consequences always. Republican politicians have shown themselves horrifyingly willing to embrace policies with known bad consequences in order to gain an advantage that is momentary at best, but more often illusory. I suggest that the issue of same sex marriage is a hill to die on. To stand on principle for America’s long term strength, stability and viability.